In the new
century, Spanish-language genre cinema, both Spainish/Catalonian and the
Central-Latin American variants, is doing remarkably well, especially in the
realm of orthodox (puzzling-solving) mysteries and politically conscious
horror-thrillers. Just check out the roster of new movies and TV series added
to Nexflix and Amazon and it should become obvious that many interesting and
rewarding Hispanic works of horror and dark fantasy are steadily supplied
nowadays, even if not all of them demonstrate the level of creativity scaled by
the Guadalajara native Guillermo Del Toro or the Barcelonite J. A. Bayona. For
the last two decades the DVD (and now HD disc) revolution has also steadily
rehabilitated reputations of the classic-- '60s to '80s-- Spanish-language
horror filmmakers, such as Armando de Ossorio (of the Blind Dead films fame), Paul Naschy (a.k.a. Jacinto Molina Alvarez,
the "Spanish Lon Chaney" himself) and, er, yes, Jesus Franco (There
are also cult favorites such as the Brazilian auteur Jose Mojica Marins, whose
language of choice is Portuguese, so perhaps the "Spanish-Portuguese-language"
is really the technically correct designation). To this illustrious roster
belongs Narsciso Ibáñez Serrador, who directed only two theatrical features, this film and the monstrously
powerful Who Can Kill a Child?(¿Quién puede matar a un niño? 1976), bracketed by more than fifty years of celebrated TV work, most
notably the long-running genre series Historias
para no dormir (Stories to Stay Awake,
1966-1982).

Often cited
online as a film that inspired Argento's Suspiria
(a perversely diminishing claim reproduced in the Scream Factory Blu Ray's back
cover), La residencia unabashedly dives
into a hoary Gothic set-up, a 19th century girl's boarding school for
"troubled girls," run with an iron discipline by a sexually repressed
headmistress. The film's ostensible protagonist, Therese, is immediately picked
upon by a clique of mean seniors, led by the nasty Irene, upon arrival. However,
she also befriends the headmistress's weakling son, Luis, apparently willing to
help the frustrated girls escape the stuffy establishment. Unfortunately for
them, a knife-wielding murderer is stalking the corridors of the dormitory, and
the presumed "escapees" have in reality been gruesomely dispatched by
the maniac.

The full
description of the plot (including the "shocker" ending, which I
shall not reveal here) makes the film appear unbelievably lurid and
exploitative, but compared to, say, the Italian horrors such as What Have You Done to Solange? (1972),
also starring Galbo, of the same period, La
residencia remains quite restrained and levelheaded (until the very last
fifteen minutes of the film, but perhaps even then). Serrador spends a lot of
time not only building up considerable suspense and atmosphere of dread, but
also illustrating character traits, not usually paid attention to in the
flamboyant Euro-horrors of this period. Even though the director pulls off a
few flashy stylistic set-pieces, mostly during the startling murder sequences
(including a very effective use of slow-motion, both sonic and visual), he for
the most part keeps things subtle. There are potentially exploitative scenes--
such as a girl stripped of shirt and caned as a corporal punishment, and a
group shower-- but the prurience quotient is not high at all (the shower scene
does manage to work up sexual tension leading to a silent confrontation between
a girl and Madame Fourneau, but it highlights repressive atmosphere rather than
eroticism).

Despite the fact the film is more or less confined to a (admittedly
huge) single mansion, Serrador eschews excessive theatricality, and wrangles
good to excellent performance out of his cast members. Anglophilic affectation
is a strange problem that still plagues some Spanish-language genre films even
in the 21st century, but most viewers will not have a problem accepting the
English-language dialogues of the (allegedly) French characters in this Spanish
production (Serrador's uncommon sensitivity to the spoken languages is in fact
one of the reasons why Who Can Kill a
Child? works so well with the English-Spanish mixed soundtrack, and not with
the Spanish dubbing).

Having said that, one of the
weaknesses of the film is that it is really about the relationship between
Madame Fourneau and her son, and the film's obvious identification figures, including
Therese, are in fact pawns of the director deployed to mislead the viewers, or
to serve, in the ultimate sense, as objects putting plot mechanisms in motion.
Like quite a few psychological thrillers of '60s and early '70s, La residencia goes through an abrupt
shift in the positionality of central characters (no doubt some of this is due
to the overwhelming influence of Psycho),
which is certainly effective, but as a result, the viewers are not allowed to
receive dividends from their emotional investments in the main characters.
Well, it is a horror film, after all, and slapping the viewer's faces out of their complacent expectations might be regarded as a fair game. Yet, the British couple of Who Can Kill a Child?, its
fish-out-of-water protagonists, have zero trouble garnering our sympathies,
without Serrador having to resort to any kind of genre-savvy manipulation of
the viewer expectations. La residencia,
while an undeniably high-quality Gothic horror show, does not exactly transcend
the visible mechanics of the genre.

Lilli Palmer might
have been cast thanks to her famous turn as a teacher in the 1958 version of Mädchen in Uniform. I am not sure a 19th-century
French school mistress would quite have the kind of cutting diction (in
English) as she uses in this film, but otherwise her performance is excellent,
adding shadings to the character so that she would not end up a mere sadistic dragon
lady. Moulder-Brown, who had had a long career as a child actor since late '50s,
was possibly cast for his angelic looks, but in this film and the
unclassifiable masterpiece Deep End
(1970) he manages to leave an indelible impression as a soft-spoken teenager
gradually revealing frightening levels of instability and obsession to the
viewers. Among the girls, Mary Maude (equally striking in the rather twaddle-dum
cult horror opus Crucible of Terror
[1972]) leaves a strong impression as the meanest but strongest-willed
potential victim.

Critics will
probably have little difficulty in reading allegorical meanings into La residencia, given that it is about a
closed-off, repressed community under a stern but ineffectual "dictator"
who unintentionally allows psychosis to brew under the façade of order and enlightenment,
but taken at its face value, the film remains a strong psychological thriller-Gothic
horror that rewards multiple viewings and certainly deserves its classic
status.

The House That Screamed has been one of the titles high up in the list for restoration of its
longer cut for many years but remained inexplicably MIA during the DVD years,
except for bargain-basement budget edition from Sinister Cinema, even when
Serrador's Who Can Kill a Child?
received a lavish special edition treatment by Dark Sky Films, forcing fans to
procure the Spain-produced DVD with the Spanish language edition only, without
English subs. In 2016 Scream Factory, the horror imprint of Shout! Factory
finally filled in the gap with a welcome special edition that includes both the
original release version (clocking at 102 minutes) and the U.S. release cut
shorn of approximately ten minutes by the American International Pictures.

The longer
cut switches to SD-level footage noticeably inferior in quality whenever the
excised bits are reintroduced. Thankfully the process is not too distracting.
Curiously, the Spanish language audio is not included, although, given the
English-language command of Palmer, Moulder-Brown and Maude, the English track
makes greater sense than the Spanish dub in any case.

The 1080p
transfer certainly looks good but is supposedly taken from internegatives, and
color scheme tends toward somewhat subdued red and brown, which might well have
been Serrador's original intention. While not as colorful and fresh-looking as
some viewers might have hoped, the visual presentation is overall rich and
robust, unlike some other vintage BD titles that tend to sport "faded
beige" look. The DTS-mastered mono audio also does its job. In fact, the
crackle and pop that suddenly intrude in the soundtrack in the inferior-quality
restored scenes are far more distracting than the drop in visual quality.

Supplements include
brief interviews with Moulder-Brown (conducted in 2011 at a German screening of
Deep End) and Maude (done in 2012
during the Manchester Film Festival), both well-aged and pleasant, giving the
audiences nice run-down of the production of La residencia, with impressions of Serrador (apparently a tough
taskmaster) and Palmer (an old school film star). Not as professionally put-together
as a piece done by Red Shirts or other specialists in DVD supplementary docus,
they are nonetheless very welcome additions.